This past Sunday night featured one Super Bowl, but two halftime shows — an illustration of an ever-widening cultural divide in America.
Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show” drew over 6.1 million viewers on YouTube — and over 25 million when you include replays and aggregated views across other streaming sites.
Prior to the event, TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet stated, “The All-American Halftime Show is an opportunity for all Americans to enjoy a halftime show with no agenda other than to celebrate faith, family, and freedom. We set out to provide an entertainment option that will be fun, excellent, and exciting for the entire family while millions are gathered together for the big game.”
Airing on NBC in tens of millions of other homes on Sunday night was the performer known as “Bad Bunny” — Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio — a rapper, singer, and professional wrestler. A native of Puerto Rico, his show was performed entirely in Spanish.
The TPUSA show featured Kid Rock urging viewers to read their Bibles and turn their lives over to Christ. Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett also performed.
Based on social media chatter, it was Brice’s song, “Country Nowadays,” that seemed to strike a strong chord with audiences. Debuting it for the Super Bowl audience, the 46-year-old country singer sang about his frustrations of living in a culturally upside-down world:
The chorus drove the point home:
On Truth Social, President Trump weighed in on the Bad Bunny performance.
“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children who are watching throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World.”
Not surprisingly, the Washington Post saw things differently, stating, “In general, the show had the kind of wholesome, traditional family values that would have fit right in with some of the more sentimental commercials that appeared during the game.”
Super Bowl halftime shows have come a long way since the 1970s and 1980s when they regularly featured college marching bands. During the first matchup in 1967, the University of Arizona played music from the “Sound of Music” as well as the “William Tell Overture.” For Super Bowl XI in 1977, the Walt Disney Company produced renditions of “It’s A Big, Wide, Wonderful World,” the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, and “It’s a Small World.”
It’s an even smaller world in 2026 thanks to the ability to stream alternative shows like Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime” extravaganza nearly everywhere anywhere.
While Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, didn’t attend the show, she praised the production and concluded the point of the effort was to communicate that “It’s okay to love Jesus and your country.”
Amen.
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